


Poor Company

by jenni3penny



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 04:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19455958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: "Because their victim is a beautiful blonde and there's no getting past the neurons in your brain and the recognized routes they most often take in regards to the woman you're in love with."





	Poor Company

He's been running an internal bet as to which of the four of them is gonna end up in Jack's office first. Because, while she isn't their resident therapist, she sure is the calmest and most understanding port in such an emotionally charged storm. Before they'd gotten half through processing the murder scene he had called and asked her to hang around after hours.

Just for awhile, just in case. Because every one of them had gone predominantly silent. And he'd wanted to hear her voice.

_"Wanna stick around ‘til we're back?"_

And now every one of them is walking dead-empty, stricken silent in an elevator. Emotionally drained, spent and used up and they've already wrung their own selves out before getting back to their home base. His gut is churning up bile and burning it but he knows it's also called 'Rage' by another name.

_"You need me?"_

_"One of them will."_

The sight of that much blood and brutality makes the world go gradients of stark gray and crimson. That much blood gets so tacky as it dries that even the latex of their gloves starts to stick and the smell… The smell is so strangely cloying, unbearable.

_"What about you, Gibbs? You okay?"_

It won't be Tim to search her out. He's pretty sure of that. Tim is the man who's gonna go home and watch his babies breathe (up-and-down and up-and-down their little chests go while they sleep so soundly). He's gonna be in the nursery until some ungodly hour when Delilah finally makes him go to bed.

Palmer is likely the same… he'll need to be close to Breena, to see her safe and smiling.

(Because their victim is a beautiful blonde and there's no getting past the neurons in your brain and the recognized routes they most often take in regards to the woman you're in love with.

… _Jacqueline_.

He had absolutely _had_ to call and hear her voice.)

But it _won't_ be him in her office. Not yet.

He can't look at her right now. He's barely got his shit braced together and Jack is the thing that can make him come apart, she's become the password to the secrets he wouldn't tell anyone else. He can't face her until he can manage to quiet down the loudness of how empty his head feels.

_"We'll talk later."_

It's gonna be Nick or Ellie that ends up in her office.

Lately Nick is starting to learn how to navigate his frustration and it's impressive, actually… But Ellie is the one that gets off the elevator first and says "I'm never gonna get that smell out of my hair."

She's right.

She's going to smell it even when it isn't there.

***

"You're still here? It's after eight."

By the surprise in the younger woman's voice she knows that none of them were aware of Gibbs' call. So she shrugs and stretches her shoulders back, exhaling as Ellie takes a few steps into the room and pauses.

"Finishing up some things. You just get back?" Jack asks, noting the way the other agent's glance is suddenly fixed upon the book shelf in the corner. Jack shifts slightly on the couch, closing her laptop and leaning it onto the coffee table. "Ellie?"

"We're reading the same book. It was on her bedside table…" She shakes her head into the pause she takes and Jack watches her suck down a deeper breath than should be necessary. "I mean… what are the odds on that?"

"That's pretty harrowing," Jack replies softly, her hand lifting to offer a seat. The other woman doesn't take it, instead leaning her body into the back of the chair she had been offered. "She your age?

"Little older. Blonde. All her pictures… Even through the blood you can see that she was pretty."

Jack winces slightly, feeling the frown take over her features as she pulls her glasses off and sets them on top of the laptop. "There was blood on the pictures?"

Bishop leans even farther forward and her chin rests onto her forearm, keeping the chair blocked between them entirely. Her gaze is distant as she looks at nothing off to Jack's left, her forehead pinched. "There was blood _everywhere_."

This is going to take longer than she had expected...

There's too much vacancy in Ellie's eyes, in her voice and stretched posture. She's emotionally dissociative, starting to depersonalize the situation and it's awfully familiar.

As much as she may hate to admit it… he'd been absolutely right in calling her.

Jack stands and squeezes against the younger woman's shoulder on her way to close the door. "Ellie, sit down."

***

He knows it's just gone eleven when she starts down the stairs because the nightly news has just started on the muted television in the corner. They're still working on the major news stories and he blinks back down as he listens to her boots on the stairs.

"Keep Bishop close to home tomorrow," she offers as her only greeting, voice tired but still strong in its request.

"She can take it, Jack." He feels like the proudly ambitious father as he balks, like he's pushing against her mother's wishes and for just one brief moment he breathes in that feeling, lets it permeate him.

Eleanor is headstrong, precocious, sweet and intelligent. She's too smart sometimes, and willful. Very similar to any possible child born of his proud stubbornness and Jack's wonderfully good nature. The problem is that she _does_ also share some off their worst combined traits - like hyper-focusing during a case, or bearing guilt that isn't her own.

"Did you hear what I asked?" she demands as she hits the bottom of the steps, no play in her tone of voice as her hand drops from the rail.

"Yeah," he murmurs before blowing off some sawdust, smoothing his palm against the sanded wood. "I heard."

"And apparently it was bad enough for you to avoid my office all together." He ignores how close she moves at first, hearing and smelling and feeling her warm proximity without visually or vocally acknowledging it. He's still not entirely sure what's gonna happen when she makes him face her. "Look at me."

And there it is…

"Don't _push_ tonight, Jack." He can feel his frustration, his anger, wave off him and wreck her back slightly - though she doesn't really move. He silently commends her for that, for her lack of response, her placid calm.

"I won't," she agrees sincerely, shrugging it away lightly and as though he isn't throwing his attitude around as he turns toward the workbench and tosses tools into each other with a clatter. "Want me to stay or go?"

Gibbs frowns to the side, head turned downward. She's wearing the black leather boots he likes and of course he doesn't want her to leave. He also doesn't wanna inadvertently take the day out on her. "M'gonna be pretty piss poor company, sweetheart."

"So I should go? That what you mean?"

" _No_ , just fact." He shrugs and reaches out for her, no explanation except honest reality. She lets him draw her between him and the workbench, her head leaning back as he presses her into place and then ducks his head forward.

Jack's hand comes up to catch him close, her mouth against the side of his head while she threads her fingers into his hair. A comforting sound comes up her throat as she kisses on him. "Would food and sex help?"

He laughs against her throat, rubs his lips against warm and perfumed skin. "In that order?"

"I mean, I'm _starving_ so, yeah? Probably?"

He's learned not to get between Jack Sloane and a long delayed meal, no matter the hour. That lesson had been taught to him the hard way and had ended in having to buy her three burritos and a Mojito at an all-night cantina. He still counts that as their third date - even though she argues that any meal beginning after midnight isn't a date but a "rescue" instead.

Gibbs smirks, finally studying the way the shadowed basement lighting makes her eyes a muddy amber color, like old brown bottles. "What kind?"

"Fast and rough and - "

He interrupts her sass with a kiss, meant to encourage her playfulness even while he tells himself to slow the hell down. That rarely helps with her, though. She's pliant and passionate and he may not lift her into the kiss but he's got a hand on the back of one cocked thigh (it's those fucking skirts she wears, they murder his resolve). The other hand catches in her hair when she lays a sound of hushed surprise on his tongue.

He's gotta stop and let the both of them breathe. More oxygen to the brain is the only thing that's going to save him for a moment.

"I meant the food, Jack," he kisses onto her, feeling her shake a little as she exhales.

" _Shame_ ," she whispers and the velvet husky sound of it gives another good and swift tug at his groin, jerking his hips into hers as she kisses him again, purposely slower. She's so soft sometimes, he can't fucking stand it, especially when she moans into his tongue and brushes both palms down his cheeks to stop his advance. "I love it when you get down and dirty."

"I'm aware," he groans as she layers kisses along his jaw and up in front of his ear. She's likely less than ten seconds away from getting shoved up onto the bench and dinner will be an afterthought. Or end up being their breakfast.

If he's honest with himself, though? She's more likely to end up being his breakfast at this rate.

"You're lucky Serafina loves one of us." The words are still gentle and quiet and it makes the basement seem ten times bigger than usual. The room itself has become an audience to the way she can inexplicably flip his mood like a goddamn light switch. "She let me pick up from the bar after the kitchen had closed so we'll have to re-heat it."

Her right palm presses up between them and he takes a deep breath down through his nose to steady himself just about the same time she shakily exhales. Gibbs lifts a hand to brush her hair out of her face, smiling as she looks up at him with flushed cheeks.

Her other hand catches into his hoodie and tugs at him. She leans left to step out from between him and the edge of the bench, steering him back by tugging on his shirt and he just snorts a half laugh as she silently points at him with the other hand as a threat.

"I'm too hungry for distractions." Her shrug has him chuckling as she moves away from him and toward the bottom step. "Hands to yourself, Cowboy."

"Jack?"

"Hmm?" She stalls at the base of the stairs, tips back on her heels and turns back toward him as he follows.

"Ellie okay?" He edges up close, despite the warning he's just been given.

"She'll be fine. She can take it," she murmurs, repeating his earlier argument with a hush that makes his body sway forward to catch it. One of her hands lifts to stroke down his temple and jaw, the pad of her thumb catching against his bottom lip as she leans forward and nods toward the door. "C'mon, come get some."

He smiles at the innuendo, the teasing wink and the well meant tug of his chin. Gibbs leans against the rail and simply enjoys watching her climb the stairs.

***

She has to give him credit for at least letting her eat her dinner before trying to get her skirt off her. He obviously hasn't had much of an appetite, ignoring his plate and swilling down liquor slowly and languidly while watching her eat. His answers to her questions have all been guttural and short and usually paired with a shrug. But he'd watched her intently, beautiful eyes surfing over her mouth and eyes and hair.

He's poured her favorite wine and carried it to her before his hand catches her shoulder, then drifts toward her neck. His fingertips tease and trace on her throat as she swallows and when she turns her head to look up at him he's caught far off staring.

Sometimes he's near impossible for her to read and it seems even harder on the days when she finds herself concerned for or by him. And she's doubly concerned by how distant he seems in his silence, how far inside of himself he's gone even as she sits right beside him.

There's a floating detachment that matches the way Ellie had been staring at her bookshelf without seeing anything. He just happens to be compulsively running his fingers along her throat instead, completely enclosed by his own thoughts - or… or emptiness? Emotional bankruptcy? She wouldn't know. He wouldn't tell her. But she can smell the bourbon, his sweat and frustration, can feel the way the pressure of his fingers changes as she looks up at him entirely.

She'll bet double down that the victim was strangled, choked, had her throat slashed - any combination of the three. Considering Ellie's blood fixation she's leaning heavily toward the latter, though.

Jack lifts her hand and catches his still, laying it flat against her throat as he startles over her. It's not until he studies her for a moment that he realizes what he's done and she's mildly surprised by how swiftly he sets his drink down and starts clearing plates.

_Right_ … complete denial and moving onward.

"You wanna talk?" she asks behind her shoulder, head turned but not enough to watch him. She can near feel the wall come up, though, something about his demeanor shifting as he puts his back to her.

This, _this_ moment. The cold turn of his shoulder and the impenetrable wall of stubbornness. She can imagine this exact habit of his precipitating all three of his now socially historical divorces.

He just sighs hard enough to fill the kitchen with the sound and she stands in answer, stepping toward him as he answers. "That wasn't mentioned in the tour package earlier."

All right, _sure_. She can play on the same (mine)field as the former Gunnery Sergeant. She's had plenty of practice compartmentalizing her trauma and then having to re-hash it all at a later date, why the hell not? Sure, two can pretend to play the Supposedly Invincible Pressure Cooker game.

"Right, food and sex. Those were the highlights," she gives in response, voice lowered and purposely darker than usual. He doesn't answer vocally, instead turning his head into the way she comes up against the back of him.

He turns into her touch, one hand guiding her closer as he shifts, the other braced to the counter as they end up pressed together. His eyes flick over her face, butane blue and hotter than she's expecting. The intense way he looks at her sends a hot spike right from her gut and down between her thighs.

"What? Now you're shy, Gunny?" Her voice has a hush to it, leading him to watch her mouth move as he cocks his jaw to angle opposite hers. "I mean, we've done each other's laundry."

"Stop being funny." He squints at her, shakes his head slowly as she studies his face with a half formed smile.

He's on to her, got her number, and she isn't the least bit surprised by that. She sorta likes the way he so accurately reads her, especially when she's being a little purposely passive aggressive just to get a rise out of him. He's sexy when she stirs him up...

He may be a man that likes a good fight but, hell, she's a woman who likes to _win_ sometimes. "Why? You _like_ funny."

"Because that's usually how you get me to talk."

Oh, he's not at all wrong and she flushes a little at being called out. Honesty and humor are two of the fastest ways she knows to get Leroy Jethro Gibbs to open his stubborn mouth.

"And you don't wanna talk," she surmises, nodding slowly, intentionally getting into his space. It only takes a minute shift of her hips to put her thigh flush between his and he barely has time to blink before she purposely rubs up against his length with her thigh, hot fabric and his frustration between them.

He squints at her, "Nope."

Jack just nods into his answer, holding his glance as she runs her hands down his chest. A supposedly understanding noise comes up her throat as she flicks a thumbnail on a shirt button. "So you don't wanna talk and you didn't wanna eat…"

" _Jack_."

Both her hands stroke up his chest, heels dragging upward and catching up the fabric of his shirt. She catches against his shoulders, fingers flexing into muscle as she pulls them closer. "Sex is still on the table, right?"

"It's gonna be on the counter if you don't keep your damn hands to yourself," he taunts, a growl coming up his throat as she laughs. The soft sound turns into a half yelped noise when he catches the back of her left thigh and tugs, throwing her off balance and putting all her weight on her right side.

Jack lets her head drop back under the turn of his mouth against her throat. Her hands find purchase on his shoulders, gripping him close as he sucks against skin and draws her thigh against his hip at once. His other arm braces her lower back, driving her tighter into his groin.

"Don't you tease me with a good time, Cowboy," she murmurs, enjoying the feel of his erection against her thigh but still denying him the kiss he wants as he lifts his head to hers. " _Talk_ to me?"

She can see and feel the moment he caves, his whole body settling with a sigh. He doesn't always give in to her but she likes to see that he's starting to bend into her insistence more often when his (or her) mental health is on the line.

"She was beautiful and blonde and I needed to hear your voice. Just… Just to make sure you were _safe_."

Surprise quiets her after he shrugs, his nose twitching as he sniffs and before he runs his hand across his face. He creates his own distraction, anything to avoid meeting her eyes with his own. She can nearly see him flush as he avoids her searching eyes and she has to dip her head to the side a little to try and force his attention back to her. Her palm catches along his jaw and pulls his head back to hers while she watches him.

"I'm fine," Jack whispers before kissing softly onto his mouth, drawing him back to her slowly. " _Really_. I'm right here."

"Enough talk."

Jack simply nods agreement to his request, her palms enclosing his face with a light touch. "I appreciate your patience earlier, y'know? I was starving."

"That was _fear_ , hon," he kisses up her cheek as her hands fall, laughter warming her ear as he continues. "I don't get between you and piccata."

Both palms shove at his shoulders in supposed annoyance, her whole body pretending to wiggle away from him as he just wraps tighter around her waist. "You're such an ass."


End file.
